


Forgotten Songs

by Ardwynna



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Far Future, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Secrets, Vignette, domestic life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 05:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16906632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardwynna/pseuds/Ardwynna
Summary: Part one: Sephiroth played a longer game than anyone realized. He played and won.





	1. Chapter 1

Sephiroth would not be stopped. Could not be stopped. He waited in the dark shadows, biding his time. Cloud grew old. His great-grandchildren died. His descendants ran thin. And Sephiroth waited till no one was left who thought the tales of Meteor and the One Winged Angel were anything more than a story from long ago. Then he struck.

There was no one to stop him. Old souls did not remember who they had been, what they had done. New souls did not know him until it was too late. He gathered them all, all the souls, all that delicious energy, human, animal, plant. Cetra too, their influence long weakened without living foothold on the earth. He took the dead and the living and turned them into flame, breaking the dying rock from its path around the sun. He hurtled through space, burning lives as fuel as he went, and found his new planet to start afresh, a world for him, and his mother, and what he saw fit to create on it.

The empty husk still floated near, stark, dry and dead, in orbit as a dusty moon around a new green world and its bright white sun. It would be ages, eons, before the Children of the Winged God could walk its barren roads. The first who did paused, considering it a trick of the bitter silence, a malfunction of her helmet, a hallucination brought on by traveling through space.

Singing. Lonely singing. A female voice, light and girlish and broken from isolation, singing, then pleading, begging to be allowed to leave, to be allowed to come, to be allowed to die.


	2. Wanderers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With eternity to roam, comes a quiet sort of truce.

Sometimes Sephiroth wasn’t sure if they were walking in a growing field, or her boundless dream of one, her corner of the Promised Land. The world had changed for the living. They had changed. Grass grew greener. Flowers grew brighter. The air grew clearer. The rain was more pure. Mako gave way to oil, which gave way to the wind and sun. The Planet began to heal. 

“Do you miss it?” he asked one day on the road to the old city.

“What, my church?” she said. “Not really. I spent most of my life in there. I know what it looks like. Besides, there’s no need to go with everyone moved on.”

The old city still rose above them, reclaimed by green growth that was slowly pulling it into the deep earth below. The City in the Sky would not stand forever. Centuries, perhaps, but not forever. “There it is,” Aeris said.

Grey stone walls stretched up to the open sky. Remnants of stained glass streamed floral light across the ground. A field of lilies spilled out of the doorway and down the slope. The steps had worn away long ago. They stepped through into the guarded space. The spring still existed, perhaps a little smaller than it had been in times of great need. Flowers grew right up to the edge under the open sky. Aeris spun around in the grass, face turned up to the sun. “This is it?”

“This is it?” Sephiroth looked around. “Where’s the roof?”

“Oh, that fell in long ago. It was never very strong.” She skirted the edge of the water to the altar where an old sword still stood. “Huh. It’s gone pretty rusty. Help me straighten it up, will you?”

Sephiroth lent a hand and stood over her as she sat with her feet in the water. She sighed at the coolness of the water, but made no ripples at all. “This is nice,” she said. “You should try it.”

“Sure you want me putting my battle-hardened hooves in your holy water?”

“Why not? It might get rid of that crusty heel callus.”

Sephiroth snorted but sat anyway, gliding downwards as flowing black smoke and remaking himself barefoot and seated at the water’s edge. “Nope, callus is still there.”

Aeris kicked water towards him and leaned back on her hands. She still walked like a mortal, sat and stood like one, even now. Sephiroth let himself become free floating spirit energy and went up to examine the rafters before coming back down. “It’s nice,” he said at length.

“It is,” Aeris said. She leaned forward and stared into the water. “Let me know when you’re ready to go back.”

“But we just got here,” Sephiroth said. “And you haven’t been here in a long time, have you?”

Aeris closed her eyes. “I’ve spent enough time here already,” she said, face turned up to the fading sun. No shadow crossed her face. “Did you know, for a while, afterwards, this was almost the only place I could go?”

“What?”

She shrugged again and swirled one foot in the water. “We travel the whole Stream,” she said, “but we’re drawn to the places we had the strongest ties to in life.” The colors of her grew muted and dim. “I hadn’t traveled much, for a Cetra. I saw a lot with Cloud and the gang, but… well.”

Years had passed. Cloud was gone. Midgar was an ancient ruin, and ‘Sephiroth’ was a name parents used to make their children behave. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” she said. “I traveled enough eventually.”

Sephiroth became black spirit again, flowing with but never in the Stream. “I’m still sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Aeris flickered back to her usual brightness and stood. “Well, you did cost me some time,” she said, plucking him out of the air and shaking him back to ground. “But you and me, we have all the time in the world.”


	3. Life With Cetra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Cetra in the house means a few adjustments and adaptations.

It was pleasant enough, at first. The herbs struggling on the kitchen window sill perked up and flourished. The little bouquets she brought home sometimes lasted for weeks and weeks. They took long walks. He fed her well, and like the plants, with sunlight and a little cool water, she thrived.

Then his mint plant broke its pot and took over half the window, battling the parsley for dominance. If he missed a spot sweeping, grass sprung up in the smallest smear of dirt. It was when he found the seedling growing out of the shower drain he had to put his foot down.

“I’m trying,” she said, stuffing her face with herb-and-lemon river trout on a bed of wild rice, both on sale with an added coupon from the Sunday news. “It’s not like I do it on purpose, you know, it’s just how the energies respond.” He was never sure how an average healthy, non-Midgarian-raised Cetra ever managed to keep a low profile, much less stay completely hidden.

And the plants kept growing. He got hedge clippers to battle the coriander. Weeding the bathtub became routine. They woke up one morning to find that the evening’s bouquet had flourished into a full bramble, a mess of bright flowers atop a thicket with thorns. With clippers and kitchen shears and a little bit of the sword, they hacked it into manageable bundles and set them loose in the park with a vague hope they would not strangle all other life.

“Sorry,” she said over fresh sea salt bread and rosemary baked chicken. “That literally never happened before.”

It’s not her fault. It’s technically her gift, that living green would hear the Planet in her nearby blood and strive to grow towards it. And she’s strong now, healthy and fit like no below-plate Midgarian ever was. And if she’d been strong enough even then to make flowers grow out of starving earth, well…

He put some of the herbs out on the fire escape and hoped they did not take over the whole town.  



	4. Hush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aeris never came clean about her parentage.

She knew what she would find before she reached the door. It was quiet inside, and cold. The screens all around flickered with static, the recordings played out, the sad story told.

And Sephiroth stood in the middle of it all, back turned, head bowed, stone still. Aeris said nothing. She reached out to him, but drew her hand back as his chest heaved. There was no sound. No sound from him at all. Aeris closed her eyes and exhaled. She wrapped her arms around herself against the invading cold.

She waited till her feet felt grounded on the floor again, when her weight did not shift off-center of its own accord. When she opened her eyes Sephiroth still stood where he had been. His head tilted back, as if answers lay on the ceiling. Aeris sighed and stepped over to the console. Her fingers went over the controls she had learned too well. One by one the lights and screens turned off.

When she turned around Sephiroth was looking right at her, or through her. It was hard to tell. The glow in his eyes had dimmed. He raised his chin. “You knew?”

She nodded. “My mother told me,” she said, looking around at the equipment that dominated the room. “And then I saw these.”

Sephiroth’s chest moved as he took a deep breath. He turned away, spinning on one heel to give her his back again. It was snowing outside again, Aeris thought, studying his tall frame against the far window. They would have to walk back in the cold.

As if he thought the same, Sephiroth shivered. His shoulders drooped and he seemed to curl in on himself. “They told me he died,” he said, arms hanging limp at his sides. “They told me he died, but they never said how.”

Aeris felt the threat of tears she thought had been all cried out. “I’m sorry.”

Sephiroth shook his head. “It’s not like you did it,” he said, and they both ignored the way his voice cracked. He looked back over his shoulder, nose a little red. From the cold.

Aeris swallowed against the lump in her throat and almost choked. “It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t stepped in to protect us.” She closed her eyes against the burn. “They wouldn’t have come for him at all if my mother hadn’t- hadn’t had me.”

She crumpled and fell. She hit something large and warm instead of the cold, hard floor. He didn’t say anything. She didn’t either. They stayed inside all night, and afterwards blamed it on the snow.


	5. Quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sephiroth is a quiet man.

Sephiroth is quiet, and discreet. He is not frivolous, does not gossip, doesn’t attempt to ‘overhear’. There are things that happen right in front his face that go no further than that, because he is uninterested, and maybe unimaginative as well. But most importantly he is biddable. Controllable. He is theirs.

No one would think twice about what they do in front of furniture, and Sephiroth off the field does not amount to much more than a chair. Useful. Part of the scenery. Ignored when unneeded, otherwise there to serve. It’s nothing to discuss personal matters within his hearing. No big deal to mismanage company funds. Make filthy jokes about THOSE people and conspire to deceive the world. Screw somebody on a shinra desk, where someone’s always getting screwed.

He won’t say anything. He won’t bat an eye. He’s just a cog and he’s used to it, being part of the grand machine. He won’t stop you. He learned early he could not stop anyone here. He won’t attempt blackmail. He was raised to think there is nothing more he could want. Don’t mind those eyes even if they see it all.

Sephiroth knows all your secrets but he has no one to tell.


End file.
